


Nepeta the Bloodletter: The Tower of the Spider

by mitspeiler



Series: Barbarianstuck [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Conan - Freeform, Gen, What is best in life?, and hear the lamentations of their women, barbarian, see them driven before you, to crush your enemies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 06:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1768381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitspeiler/pseuds/mitspeiler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rogue Nepeta, who crushes nations beneath her feet, and Karkat, who is also present, venture to a wizard's tower in search of a magical jewel.  All is not as it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nepeta the Bloodletter: The Tower of the Spider

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lordlyhour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lordlyhour/gifts).



>             Hither came Nepeta the Bloodletter, black haired, smiling-eyed, with hands clawed in steel; a rogue, reaver, slayer, with feline melancholies and kittenish mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the earth beneath her talon-shod feet.
> 
> — _The Horrorterror on the Claw_

            “You fucks you fucking fucks I ought to fucking kill you all right the fuck fucking fuck now,” Karkat snarled, holding his bronze scythe in front of him like a ward against evil.  His eyes blazed with the kind of anger that only manifests when fear is deterred.

            Nepeta was on the ground, playfully writhing around in the grasp of a mating pair of a wild meowbeasts.  They playfully nipped at her, retracting their teeth so as not to shear the flesh from her bones.  The monsters were nearly as long as a troll was tall, their eyes glowing spectral, ghostly green in the unnatural dark, each equipped with two mouths.  Of course, the mouths were smiling, and they were both purring rather than growling in fury like the horrible murder-things they both were.  The three creatures on the ground were in goddamn ecstasy.  Nepeta, dressed in a fur cloak that matched the creatures’, could easily have been their cub.  “You two,” she said, ignoring her partner, “are pawsibly the cutest and purrhaps the best kittens I have ever met!”

            “I got _this_ —” he rammed his hand into his pocket and tore out a small draw-string pouch, almost tearing out the lining of his pocket— “stupid fucking megadeath poison made of fucking death’s head stingerbeasts rendered down in biclops blood specifically to take care of these exact animals and here you are _playing with them_!”

            Nepeta kissed the male on its pink nose and it yawned happily with both mouths. 

            Karkat threw down his scythe and the poison (spilling a tiny pinch of glittering yellow dust onto the ground) and growled in fury like a horrible murder-beast.  _“Will you get up we have work to do!”_

            “Okay!” Nepeta sprang to her feet and the two meowbeasts ran off into the night.  She gazed up at the Tower of the Spider, her own olive eyes glinting in the moonlight like flakes of dark jade, reflecting the monolithic structure as a tiny silver needle.  Her clothing was all white, from her kilt of white hide and her hooded cloak made from the skin of an ivory meowbeast, elfin face poking through the topmost mouth of the grinning cat.  Only her coat of scale mail was dark green with verdigris after its years of service.  Although she had grown hard and lithe, darkened with sunlight and striped with scars, Karkat still couldn’t help but think of her as the half-spastic, derpy little girl that had followed him all over their tiny village  in the ass-end of Cimmeria, big eyes turning watery when he rejected her advances time and again, yet always coming back for more.  When the fuck had she become the leader?

            Probably after ripping the sorcerer Scratch’s still-beating heart from his breast, with a cherubic smile on her face.

            “Come on!” she said, galloping towards the wall on all fours.  She sprang up and clung to it, the meowbeast talons on her shoes digging into the smooth metal surface just as the long, glittering claws on her wrists did the same.  She was already halfway up when Karkat slung his grappling hook off his shoulder.  “Stop wasting time!” she shouted down at him as he spun the hook around, heedless of who or what might hear.  He sighed.

 

            The Tower of the Spider had been in the land of Golyb since time was time, and there dwelt the wizard Eridan.  Great and immortal, the being of white science was the true power behind the throne and the king drank himself to sleep at night, unable to stand the fear he had by the mere threat of the wizard, whose tower loomed over the city like a pronouncement of judgment.  The times he left were few and far between, but when he did, it was well known throughout the kingdom.

            In his hands he held not a wand or a staff but a jewel, milky-white and transparent, the size of a coconut. It was called the Heart of the Spider and gave the tower its name, though none were sure whence the jewel’s name came.  Some think it came from an incident in which a foreign princess spurned the wizard’s advances in front of the whole court, and he struck her with a bolt of burning light.  She shriveled and burned instantly into white ash, that itself congealed together into the form of fat white spiders.  They crawled around on needle-like legs, biting the guests indiscriminately, leaving painful blue boils that did not kill but never healed.

            Ridding the wizard of his jewel would be breaking the woofbeast’s fangs, Nepeta had insisted.

 

            The top of the silver tower was rimmed with turrets of gems mortared together with gold and silver.  All the gems were in garish shades of purple and chosen for their size rather than quality.  The whole mass was probably worth ten thousand fortunes, but was still incredibly gaudy.  There was a hatch in the floor shaped from purple-streaked agate.  “Wow,” said Karkat, “we are fighting a wizard with no taste.”

            Nepeta snickered.  “How can you know that unless you’ve tried him already?”

            Karkat glared until she smashed the lock.

            The topmost room of the tower was decorated with ivory furniture, upholstered in white and spangled with more gaudy gems.  Spattered haphazardly about the floor were large chests, each filled to bursting with yet more gaudy gems, each more blatant and sickeningly violet than the last.  Nepeta’s mouth formed a little “O” and she scampered to the nearest one and started filling her pouch.

            “Really?” Karkat asked, leaning against a wall.  “You want those nasty pearlescent globs of what looks like fossilized clown-shit?”

            She snickered.  “Not for myself, Karkitty!  Think of all the good we can do with a little more money.”  He snorted in response.

            And then he screamed as three stabbing pains that burned like fire tore into his back and pulsed up and down his spine.  Unable to even clutch at his wound, he fell over stiffly as if he’d been turned to stone, mouth gurgling, eyes blazing with fury.

            Nepeta jumped to her feet, spinning on her heel, and clenched her fists.  Immediately her wrist-mounted claws sprang out; they were barbed and slender, knapped from blue crystal and set on springs.

            The creature looming over Karkat seemed massive at first, but really it was only a little taller than Nepeta, only seeming huge because of the four long, slender legs that sprang from its back.  It looked like a girl with wild, wavy white hair.  Her skin was white, and so were the armor plates of insectile chitin covering her body.  Her left hand in particular was like a heavy, spiked weapon covered in slick plates, tipped in long, needle-like claws that dripped with a mixture of cobalt-blue venom and dark red blood that sizzled as it hit the floor.  Only her eight pupil-less eyes had color; cobalt blue.  That and her cruel mouth, small, blue, pouty, and even pretty despite the wicked grin and the monstrous body that it belonged to.

            They both sprang for each other at once.  Nepeta’s hooked claws sliced at her enemy’s throat, but the spider-girl was faster and smashed her to the ground with a swipe of her leg, shattering a few scales of her armor.  For such a spindly thing it had a crippling amount of strength.  Nepeta could feel it crushing the life out of her as it pressed down.  The spider-girl leaned in slightly, positioning her body over the prone bloodletter, glaring down with unblinking eyes.   

            She opened her mouth to speak, but Nepeta didn’t hear it.  Instead she looked at Karkat, face contorted with silent pain.  His eyes locked onto hers, and something was there, buried under the pain and the rage.  Perhaps Nepeta had only imagined it, as she had often done before, but for now, it warmed her.

            And it inspired her.  Her hand snapped out and snatched the tiny bag of yellow powder from his shirt pocket.  Her unprotected fingers immediately burned something awful as a little spray of the yellow dust made contact.  “What’s this?” asked the spider, “I thought you were going for one last chest fondle but—”

            Nepeta threw it at her face.  The spider-girl shrieked and the powder rained out, falling slowly like snow.  Nepeta rolled over onto Karkat’s body and covered the both of them as well as she could with her cloak.  The spider screamed for a while longer, and then she stopped.

 

            “AUGHHHHH YOU HEINOUS BITCH I FUCKING HATE YOU GO DIE IN A FIRE MADE OF SCORPIONS THAT ARE POSSESSED BY THE SOULS OF RAPIST CLOWNS!” were the first words out of Karkat’s mouth as Nepeta applied the anti-venom.

            She pulled the needle out of his arm and giggled.  “Wow Karkitty, I love how creative you can get with your swears!”

            He sighed, glaring at the length of thin, rusty pipe she used to apply medicine.  For some reason people thought “Bloodletter” had to do with Nepeta’s prowess in battle, and while she could certainly tear out a dude’s throat with her bare hands and had once disemboweled three men with a single swipe of her deathclaws, the title had a much more mundane purpose.  Nepeta had been the doctor’s apprentice, before some warlord had steamrolled their village on his way to somewhere actually important.  She’d healed a ton more people than she had killed and was always on the lookout for new ways of doing it.  If only she hadn’t taken so much to that Xingese medicine in the Weeabro’s forest, then she might have cured Karkat with like, _painless_ tea.

            “Is there anything you don’t like about me?  _Fucking_ honestly,” he snapped.

            “Roll over,” she demanded in as friendly a way as a person can demand.  He sighed, wincing as his burned skin touched the cold floor.  “I’ve got some balm for that burning powder too,” said Nepeta, “But your bites are more serious.”  She sat on his back, stuck another hollow spike into the hole, and Karkat screamed.  Nepeta then sucked on the end and immediately spat out a glob of blood, followed by a quick spray right after.

            “Do you even know what you’re doing half the time!?” he snapped, or rather whimpered painfully.

            “Ummmm,” she said, distractedly tapping her chin, “I think you have really bad self esteem Karkat, and that makes me sad because you’re a great person and you should feel great about being you.”

            Karkat sighed.  “Thank you or whatever…”

            She stuck another needle in him.

 

            The body of the spider-girl lay sprawled in front of the doorway, all eight limbs splayed like a discarded doll.  Four of her eyes lay burnt out and blackened, and her body was drenched in blue blood that had dripped from wretched looking sores, now clotted.  Large clumps of her hair had fallen out as well, and Nepeta winced at having to carry such a dreadful poison.  Getting a closer look at the creature, she saw that the spider-girl had been a survivor of much torment, covered as she was in dreadful looking scars, and cracks spider-webbed all along her armored plates.  Except for her poisonous hand, in fact, all of her humanoid limbs had been mangled to the point of uselessness.  “Poor girl,” Nepeta said, causing Karkat to smack himself in the forehead.

            “I am seriously in danger of hurting myself if you—”

            “Avenge me…” the monster hissed, and Karkat jumped.

            “Ummmmmmm,” Nepeta muttered.  “We’re kinda the ones—”

            “ _Eeeeeeeeridannnnnnnn,”_ she hissed.  “He betrayed me…”  And so the spider-girl recounted her tale.

 

            Neither god nor demon, Vriska’s people traveled the stars on wings of light, exiled from the world of her birth, she and her crew fell to earth like a shooting star, shedding her wings and walking like a terrestrial creature.  As the millennia passed, she watched humankind and the other races emerge from the animals, beheld the magnificent city of Huston rise and sink into the sea, watched as men degenerated into savages, barely able to rediscover bronze, and watched as petty fiefdoms fought for control of the scant resources their Hustonian masters had left for them.

            “Eventually,” she murmured, “I was the only one left.  Some humans came and built me a castle, calling me their god.  I did them little favors with my magic and they bowed and scraped and called them miracles.  Then one day, Eridan asked me to teach him my secrets.  I showed him what I knew…too much.  I was getting old and weak, and my luck finally ran out.  The little bastard ripped the heart out of my chest and used it to control me, to steal my magic…”

            Vriska started laughing.  “But I didn’t teach him everything.  He doesn’t know I have _two_ of the things.”  And with her venomous arm, she pierced her own chest and, to the adventurers’ horror, tore free a strange organ that seemed made of blue crystal.

            She held it out, still beating, towards Nepeta.  “Take it,” she snarled, lips curling into a hateful sneer.  “Squeeze the blood free right onto the other one while the bastard is sleeping.  Then I’ll be whole again and I’ll have my revenge…” and with that, she pitched forward and fell dead onto her face.

            Nepeta picked up the wet, glistening thing, cradling it in her hand like a newborn.  It beat still, fluttering like the heart of a songbird.  Karkat finally gave up and vomited behind a couch.

 

            He slept with the other Heart of the Spider around his neck.  Being the size of a coconut, he clutched it in both arms like a precious bundle, suckling on the irregular, uncut tip of the stone, dribbling saliva onto his pillow.

            Nepeta crinkled her lips.  “I thought he would be handsomer.”

            Karkat scoffed.  “I’m sorry _what?_ ”

            “I just thought,” she said, tracing little circles on the ground with her foot, “I just thought that, from the way Vriska was talking, they might have been lovers.  She’s kinda pretty for an alien monster, so I figured he would be handsome too—”

            “One, that’s a stupid idea and I hate you for thinking it,” Karkat interrupted.  “Two, no one looks good while they are sleeping.”

            “You do!” she said, with a sincere glimmer of light in her eyes.  “You are the handsomest and most adorable sleeper in the world.” She took a step toward him and Karkat reddened.  “All the crap of the waking world just slides off and you look so peaceful.”  She took another; Karkat took a step back.  Whispering, Nepeta added, “It gives me hope.”

            Karkat turned and stormed over to the bed, sickle in hand.  “I’m gonna waste him,” he said, in a voice that said he would be ignoring the previous conversation with all his strength.  “I don’t trust Vriska, and I _really_ don’t want her to be able to roam free, uncontrolled, if she wasn’t lying outright.”

            Nepeta was at the bed in a flash, scowl marring her face.  “I _purrrromised_ Karkat!  I purromised in my heart when she trusted me with hers that I would do what she said!”  She grabbed Eridan’s shoulder and shook him violently.  “And I am _never_ going to kill a sleeping man.”

            “Humina wwah?” Eridan mumbled as he looked up at the two home invaders, too sleepy to even be afraid.  “Dafuq are you asshole plebs?”

            Nepeta’s eyes blazed and his bravado faded.  “Vriska sends her fondest feelings,” she said, and squeezed pale blood from the heart in her hand onto the one in Eridan’s.

            The cobalt light was blinding.  Eridan screamed and was suddenly silenced.  A sound like powerful wings beating filled the air, pounding in the adventurers’ ears until their eardrums nearly burst.  Nepeta fell to her knees, covering her ears; something hot and wet tricked out through her fingers.  A voice rang in her head.  _I am going to clear the way for you.  Be grateful, I don’t tend to do people favors._

The light went dim and the pain instantly left the heroes’ ears.  “FAVOR?” Karkat roared as he jumped to his feet.  “WE LITERALLY JUST BROUGHT YOU BACK TO LIFE!” he screamed, shaking his fist.

            Nepeta jumped up and hugged him with as much aggressive cuteness as she could muster.  Batting her eyelashes, she said “pweaaaase don’t piss off the magical energy being we just freed?”

            Karkat stiffened, then pushed her off with a meek “fine.”

 

            The tower was eerily still.  Occasionally, it would be shaken by the rumble of distant, thunderous wingbeats and flashes of blue light.  Although they met no resistance descending the stairs, it frightened them more than climbing the garden walls or the ascent up the tower’s height. Now and again, something dead could be seen lingering in a doorframe, and more than once Karkat wished he were fighting a live, screaming minotaur instead of looking at one that had been exploded from the inside.

            As they approached the ground floor, the tower began to groan.

            “It’s in pain,” Nepeta said dreamily.  Under normal circumstances Karkat would have called her stupid.  They ran down the last few flights of stairs, tumbling the final stretch.  Nepeta made a dainty three-point landing while Karkat absorbed the brunt of his own impact with his face.  She picked him up and lifted him over her head.  “Stop playing! Come on!”  And with that she sprinted out of the tower.

            The yard was full of dead; soldiers, monsters, even (she noticed with a pang in her heart) the two meowbeasts from earlier.  But Nepeta paid little mind otherwise, because the moment she cleared the gate, the tower behind her shattered, like a glass sculpture beneath a blacksmith’s hammer, and fell to the ground as less than ruins.

            Karkat was swearing the whole time.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on the Conan the Barbarian tale, “The Tower of the Elephant.” I made several changes of course, and plan to create a gigantic barbarian hero universe, in bits and pieces of story rather than some sprawling epic as I am so used to doing :P Huston being a legendary city is a reference to its sinking into the ocean in canon. What’s next? Dave of Melniboné or Jonathan Kane?  
> Hey readers, give me some more challenges yo! This story was just a challenge by Lordlyhour, issued after naming a bloodletter from the Sims after our favorite catgirl. I would love to do some more!


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